On Thursday 24 August 2006 19:17, Peter Law wrote: > I am new to Scribus and would like to use Arabic text. I understand > this is possible using Freetype, but am not sure how to get that > set up on a Windows XP system. Any help, or a pointer to a help > file, would be greatly appreciated. > > Thanks, > Peter > > Websites: > Personal: http://www.plaw.me.uk/ > Church: http://www.westkilburn.org/
Hi, Rendering Arabic text properly is one of the more difficult tasks ahead for us. It is something we have looked into and hope to have before Scribus 1.4. While there are other applications which render Arabic, doing so with the same fidelity from screen to print is not trivial. A word processor by design does not necessarily have to have same level of precision that a layout application does. This includes getting the typography and glyph shaping done properly to the same standard we have now with latin and Cryillic for example. Freetype is just one part of the puzzle. We need to enhance handling of advanced Open Type features which are on the drawing board. While you can in import Arabic text easily, it does not render properly yet, owing to the complex rules for word order. This is something highly desired by the team, but there are other internals which are being worked on now before we can support Arabic 100% Hope that clarifies where we are. Peter -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/pipermail/scribus/attachments/20060824/02cee098/attachment-0001.pgp
